king must be a priest. "Thou art a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek." This was addressed to the Jewish king; but it implied that the ideal king, of which he was for the time the representative, more or less truly, is one who at the same time sustains the highest religious character and the highest executive authority.

Again, David was emphatically the type of the Jewish regal idea. David is scarcely a personage, so entirely does he pass in Jewish forms of thought into an ideal Sovereign," the sure mercies of David." David is the name therefore for the David which was to be. Now, David was a wanderer, kingly still, ruling men and gaining adherents by force of inward royalty. Thus in the Jewish mind the kingly office disengaged itself from outward pomp and hereditary right, as mere accidents, and became a personal reality. The king was an idea.

Further still. The epistle extends this idea to man. The psalm had ascribed (Ps. viii. 6) kingly qualities and rule to manhood-rule over the creation. Thus the idea of a king belonged properly to humanity; to the Jewish king, as the representative of humanity.

Yet even in collective humanity the royal character is not realized. "We see not," says the epistle, "all things as yet put under him' man.

Collect, then, these notions. The true king of men is a Son of God; one who is to his fellow-men God and Lord, as the Jewish bride was to feel her royal husband to be to her; one who is a priest; one who may be poor and exiled, yet not less royal.

Say, then, whence is this idea fulfilled by Judaism? To which of the Jewish kings can it be applied, except

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with infinite exaggeration? To David? Why, the Redeemer shows the insuperable difficulty of this. "How, then, doth David in spirit call him," that is, the king of whom he was writing, "Lord, saying, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy enemies thy footstool?"

David, writing of himself, yet speaks there in the third person, projecting himself outward as an object of contemplation, an idea.

on:

Is it fulfilled in the human race?—"We see not yet all things put under him." Then the writer goes "But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that He by the grace of God should taste death for every man." In Jesus of Nazareth alone all these fragments, these sundry portions of the revealed Idea of Royalty, met.

II. Christianity was implied in the race of prophets. The second class of quotations refer to the prophets' life and history. (Heb. ii. 11-14.) Psalm xxii. 22; Psalm xviii. 2; Isaiah xii. 2; Isaiah viii. 18.

Remember what the prophets were. They were not merely predictors of the future. Nothing destroys the true conception of the prophets' office more than those popular books in which their mission is certified by curious coïncidences. For example, if it is predicted that Babylon shall be a desolation, the haunt of wild beasts, &c., then some traveller has seen a lion standing on Birs Nimroud; or, if the fisherman is to dry his nets on Tyre, simply expressing its destruction thereby, the commentator is not easy till he finds that a net has been actually seen drying on a rock. But

this is to degrade the prophetic office to a level with Egyptian palmistry; to make the prophet like an astrologer, or a gypsy fortune-teller, one who can predict destinies and draw horoscopes. But, in truth, the first office of the prophet was with the present. He read Eternal Principles beneath the present and the transitory; and in doing this, of course, he proph esied the future for a principle true to-day is true for ever. But this was, so to speak, an accident of his office not its essential feature. If, for instance, he read in the voluptuousness of Babylon the secret of Babylon's decay, he also read by anticipation the doom of Corinth, London, all cities in Babylon's state; or, if Jerusalem's fall was predicted, in it all such judg ment-comings were foreseen; and the language is true of the fall of the world, as truly, or more so, than that of Jerusalem. A philosopher saying in the pres ent tense the law by which comets move, predicts all possible cometary movements.

Now, the prophet's life almost more than his words. was predictive. The writer of the epistle lays down a great principle respecting the prophet (ii. 11):"Both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified ve all of one." It was the very condition of his inspi ration that he should be one with the people. So far from making him superhuman, it made him more man He felt with more exquisite sensitiveness all that be longs to man, else he could not have been a prophet His insight into things was the result of that very weakness, sensitiveness, and susceptibility, so trem blingly alive. He burned with their thoughts, and expressed them. He was obliged by the very sensi tiveness of his humanity to have a more entire

dependence and a more perfect sympathy than other men. The sanctifying prophet was one with those whom he sanctified. Hence he uses those expressions quoted from Isaiah and the Psalms above.

He was more man, just because more divine, more a son of man, because more a Son of God. He was peculiarly the suffering Israelite; his counte nance marred more than the sons of men. Hence, we are told the prophets searched "what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow." (1 Peter i. 11.)

Observe, it was a spirit in them, their own lives wit nessing mysteriously of what the Perfect Humanity must be suffering.

Thus, especially, Isaiah liii., spoken originally of the Jewish nation; of the prophet as peculiarly the Israelite; no wonder the eunuch asked Philip, in perplexity, "Of whom doth the prophet say this?- of himself, or some other man?" The truth is, he said it of himself, but prophetically of humanity; true of him, most true of the Highest Humanity.

Here, then, was a new "portion" of the revelation. The prophet rebuked the king, often opposed the priest, but was one with the people. "He that sanc tifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one."

If, then, One had come claiming to be the Prophet of the Race, and was a Sufferer, claiming to be the Son of God, and yet peculiarly man; the son of man; the son of man just because the Son of God; more Divine because more human; then this was only what the whole race of Jewish prophets should have prepared

them for. God had spoken by the prophets. That God had now spoken by a Son in whom the idea of the True prophet was realized in its entireness.

The

III. The Priesthood continued this idea latent. writer saw three elements in the priestly idea. 1. That he should be ordained for men in things pertaining to God. 2. That he should offer gifts and sacrifices. 3. That he should be called by God, not be a mere self

assertor.

1. Ordained for men. Remark here the true idea contained in Judaism, and its difference from the Heathen notions. In Heathenism the priest was of a different Race; separate from his fellows. In Judaism he was ordained for men; their representative; constituted in their behalf. The Jewish priest represented the holiness of the nation; he went into the holy of holies, showing it. But this great idea was only im plied, not fulfilled, in the Jewish priest. He was only by a fiction the representative of holiness. Holy he was not. He only entered into a fictitious holy of holies. If the idea were to be ever real, it must be in One who should be actually what the Jewish priest was by a figment, and who should carry out humanity into the real Holy of Holies, the presence of God; thus becoming our invisible and Eternal Priest.

Next, it was implied that his call must be Divine. But (in the 110th Psalm) a higher call is intimated than that Divine call which was made to the Aaronic. priesthood by a regular succession, or, as it is called in the epistle," the law of a carnal commandment." Melchizedeck's call is spoken of. The king is called a priest after his order. Not a derived or hereditary